All Yours

Widowspeak

Widowspeak have grown up in a lot of ways. The band’s third
album, ‘All Yours’, is one that could only come from Molly
Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas: a honed and elegant
interweaving of dream-pop and slowcore rock and roll,
easygoing melodies and dusty, snaking guitars. It’s also their
finest release to date - ten beautiful songs that are refreshingly
straightforward yet built from the same well chosen and deftly
used tools the band have always worked with.

‘All Yours’ is ambitious without feeling laboured, anchored in
the strengths of Widowspeak’s consistent influences. There are
those familiar Morricone - come - Verlaine guitar passages,
moody and country-tinged instrumentation, watery tremolo,
velvety stacked vocals. You can hear Molly’s affection for The
Cranberries and The Sundays in the wavering melodies of ‘Dead
Love’ or ‘Girls’ and Rob’s adoration of George Harrison and
Robbie Robertson in his brilliantly economical guitar playing.
The result is an aesthetically diverse and profoundly nostalgic
sound; indebted to past eras without feeling dated.

After many line up changes, the band chose to work again with
Jarvis Taveniere, who produced their self-titled debut in 201.
They also enlisted him and drummer Aaron Neveu (both of
whom play in Woods) as the studio rhythm section. The
presence of Taveniere and Neveu contributes a groove that
wasn’t there previously among a few other new things: the
swell of strings at critical moments and for the first time, voices
beyond Molly’s own. We finally get to hear Rob sing in the
earnestly laidback ‘Borrowed World’.

Members of psych outfit Quilt contribute harmonies and keys
throughout the record, most notably in ‘My Baby’s Gonna Carry
On’ and ‘Cosmically Aligned’.

Perhaps ‘All Yours’ is so refreshing because it’s a return to form.
It’s a record that feels as effortlessly unplanned as their debut;
that serves to capture a moment rather than create one.